21 Jan 1613 A.D. The “Great George Gillespie” of Scotland was
born.
Dr. Rusten tells
the story.
Rusten, E.
Michael and Rusten, Sharon. The One Year
Christian History. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Christian-History-Books/dp/0842355073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393302630&sr=8-1&keywords=rusten+church+history
Mr.
Gillespie was born in Scotland. He
graduated from St. Andrews University.
He came to prominence in 1637 when he anonymously published Dispute Against the English Popish
Ceremonies, Obtruded on the Church of Scotland. By this time, the English leadership had
become strenuously Arminian, strenuously anti-Genevan, and was loading up with
Romanist pieties, e.g. bowing to stocks and stones and altars too. Laud himself and his crops of cranks offended
not just the Reformed in Scotland, but the Reformed in England…then, just like
now.
Everyone
of substance recognized and recognizes the Reformed characters of the English
Reformers. But, by Laud’s time, they
were reading in their foul and un-Reformed theology injuring the Church and
defiling Biblical and Confessional truth and consensus.
Mr.
Gillespie criticized Charles 1’s imposition of English Episcopalianism on the
Church of Scotland.
In 1643,
he was Minister of Greyfriars in Edinburgh.
He was also the youngest of 4 Scotsmen to attend the famed Westminster
Assembly in London.
At the
assembly, he was called the “Great Mr. Gillespie” for his skilled defenses of
Presbyterian governance. Many stories
emerged on his skills.
One
story—perhaps apocryphal—involves a prayer that he offered. The subject before
the Assembly was “What is God?” Mr.
Gillespie offered his prayer, “God,”
thou art a “Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in Thy being, wisdom,
power, holiness, goodness, justice and truth…” The answer allegedly was picked
up and enshrined in the great Question and Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter
Catechism, a definition memorized by millions of Reformed offspring.
He was
also involved in the debate as to whether the church or state could or should
excommunicate the Mr. (Rev) Samuel Ruthersford, author of Lex Rex
He became
the Minister of High Church in Edinburgh in 1647.
In the
summer of 1648, he was elected Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
In 1649,
Mr. Gillespie became ill with tuberculosis.
From St. Andrews, Mr. Ruthersford wrote his younger colleague, “Be not
heavy: the life of faith is now called for; doing was never reckoned in your
account; thought Christ in and by you hath done more than by twenty, yea, an
hundred gray-haired and godly pastors.
Believing now is your last. Look to that word, Galatians 2.20.” Mr. Gillespie died in 1649 at age 36.
12 years
after his death, 1661, Charles II would force Episcopalianism on the Church of
Scotland. The Parliament removed George
Gillespie’s tombstone from his grave and broke it to pieces.
What the
Anglicans didn’t, couldn’t and haven’t broken was Mr. Gillespie’s legacy, The Westminster Confession of Faith, a
document far-beyond the Thirty-nine
Articles of Church of England.
Questions:
- God’s providence often takes younger people before older people. What can be learned from Mr. Ruthersford’s response?
- How should Reformed Anglicans think about 1662 and the Anglican repressions of the Scots Reformed Church?
- What might have been different if the Church of England had embraced the Westminster Confession of Faith? Why did they toss it?
- How should the Reformed and Presbyterian world evaluate those who remain Reformed but who use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer?
Sources
Barker,
William. Puritan Profiles. Ross-Shire: Mentor, 1996.
Hodges,
L.H. “Gillespie, George.” DSCHT. 359-60.
Loughridge,
Adam. “Wesstminster Assembly (1643).” NIDCC. 1039.
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